Wednesday, June 13, 2012

I know it's been a while since my last post. That is definitely not for lack of things to share. It's lack of time to sit down and write about it all!
In my last post, I mentioned that I would have a doozy of a client quilt to share with you next. I did complete it, and another ginormous King, but I didn't get to take many pictures so I'll bundle them into one later. But today I have quite the treat for you!
I love the online quilting community because I get to "meet" so many wonderful, fantastic, inspiring, amazing people. As my good friend (whom I've never actually met), Karen Marchetti said to me yesterday, "I'm beginning to realize I started quilting just to meet some very amazing people that someone intended to be in my life!" SO very true.
One of my online quilty friends is Steph. We became friends on Facebook through several mutual friends, and then I found out that she was also buddies with one of my favorite people in the world! I got to meet her while I was in KC for Market and MQS. We had an absolute blast! Steph is an avid quilter and loves to maker small-er-ish quilts that are pretty intense. She started working on this Crop Circles quilt from the book Circle Quilts by Colleen Granger.
When she said she wanted me to quilt it, I was thrilled because I just loved it!

I threw around several ideas for the quilting, and they all would've looked pretty awesome, but I wanted to do something that would really fit with the theme. I figured that stitching in the ditch around and within every single piece of the circles would give me plenty of time to think about it.
It was when I was about half way through the ditching process that it came to me: quilt a corn field.

And that's exactly what I did. I started with the plots of land and roads between them. Then I decided that every road has a ditch, so I added a ditch. Within the plots of corn field, I quilted lines at 1/4" and 1/8" for the rows of corn and the spaces between them, and filled the 1/4" separated lines with tiny pebbles, to give the texture of the corn field.

Pay no mind to my blue water-soluble pen markings. I didn't even use them. I found I do much better without marking and just sticking to the use of my trusty ruler. In the following picture, you're not really seeing anything different, but the pin is there to give you an idea of scale.

Once all of that was done (holy wow did that take patience), all I had left to do was the "ditches" and "roads". I decided to quilt the "ditches" with jagged lines, to make it look sort of rocky, or even like a dried out ditch (know how the dirt cracks?). The roads were a whole other story. For the roads, I thought it would be cool to do "tire marks", driving down the roads, turning onto other roads, some of the tire marks would be the result if a car was to be driving down a gravel road and start fish tailing (and end up with 14 stitches in their chin, perhaps?)... When I was about 1/4 of the way through quilting the first section of road, I wondered if that was really the way to go. I stopped, let the quilt drape from the machine, looked at it from a distance and decided that it was absolutely perfect. Good thing too because that would've been nearly impossible to rip out!

And the finished product!

Sorry for the super weird lighting. I don't have a lot of time to edit pictures so that's just what you get. :P For better detail you can click the pictures for a larger view.

What I really love about this quilt is that it's both a literal and abstract interpretation of the theme at the same time. Steph's beautiful work made it that much easier to quilt this top the way it was meant to be quilted (at least in my warped mind, this is how it's meant to be quilted!). The other thing I love is that it is actually the exact opposite of how you really see crop circles. Crop circles are basically where something has caused the field to be flattened, forming a design. In this case, I used two layers of bamboo batting, so the crop circle is actually the raised portion, and the field is completely quilted down.

Aaaaaaah, I love my job! And I'd better get back to it. No shortage of things to do around here!

I hope everyone is well and enjoying the beginnings of the summer season. I'll have lots more to share soon and I can't wait!

Hey, I just read my name in lights! ahhhhh.... yep, you really are brilliant! And I totally meant what I said! Steph is also brilliant because she had you quilt this! I was LOL remembering reading my phone while walking the dogs and couldn't respond (type) "crop fields" fast enough! Damn Natalie beat me! Anyway, hopefully you'll never get sick of hearing this... You are amazingly brilliant!

I have seen photos of the top before and wasn't too interested in the quilting. (I hadn't even noticed it was unquilted). You have taken a super quilt to another level.Are you in the UK? your url says so, but I don't think you are, am I wrong?

You know when I friended you on FB I never knew that it would lead to a awesome friendship and of course our mutual friend Sheryl made that even more possible. Girl you have such a talent that goes beyond the rhelms of crazy...it's like crazy brilliant!!! I love my quilt and I'm proud that you are a big part of it!!